printed and sent to a shop in Old Bond Street, where he had recently started in business as a publisher and bookseller. A few days later he sent in the manuscript of a "Life of Washington." The book does not appear to have been issued, but one hundred and fifty specimen pages were printed. Ainsworth was then in his twenty-third year. He had turned his back upon the dreary prospect of the law, with which his father, a solicitor, had vainly endeavored to lure him. He had tried authorship; had already, at the age of twenty, followed a budget of ballads and short tales with a novel ("Sir John Chiverton"), and now he brought his inexperience to the trade of publishing. To this rash excursion there could be but one end, and Ainsworth reached it speedily. Poorer and disappointed for his pains, he abandoned the business and went abroad, returning before he was thirty to write "Rookwood," the first of a long series of novels, which brought him notoriety and profit.

The Whittinghams, Uncle and Nephew, dissolved partnership in 1828, as I find by an advertisement in the "Gazette" in August of that year:

TOTICE is hereby given that the partnership named,

Nor or business carried on, by the undersigned Charles Whittingham the elder and Charles Whittingham the younger, of Chiswick, in the County of Middlesex, Printers, was this day dissolved by mutual consent. All

debts owing by or to the said partnership concern to be paid and received by the said Charles Whittingham the elder only, as witness our hands this 16th day of August,

1828.

Nephew went to London, and started a printing business there at No. 21 Took's Court, Chancery Lane. That he was still on friendly terms with his Uncle is proved by the fact that the latter made him a present of useless type and a couple of small presses which were out of repair, and stood in with him on the lease of the premises newly taken. But the Uncle had no interest in the town business, and he made no further ventures apart from his own press at Chiswick. In fact, he had sold the paper-stock factory five years before to a Mr. Nichols, and for the rest of his life he gave his attention wholly to the art of printing.

What he did

of importance during the dozen years of life that were left to him,

though here concisely set down, had not less influence than his earlier efforts in making an art of the old trade of printing in England. The earliest in date of his famous illustrated books during that period was the first series of Northcote's "Fables," or, as the title runs, "One Hundred Fables, Original and Selected by James Northcote, R. A., etc., etc. Embellished with Two Hundred and Eighty Engravings on Wood."

This was printed for George Lawford, of Saville Passage, in May, 1829. James Northcote,

R. A., who was then living in Argyle Place, had amused himself by writing many of the fables, and selecting the rest, as vehicles for his own illustration. William Harvey drew Northcote's designs on wood, and they were engraved by several of the best men of the time. There is none of

John Thompson's work in the book, but Jackson, and Branston, and Thomas Williams appear, Jackson doing more of the work than any of the others. There is a complete list of the engravers at the end of the volume. A second series of Northcote's Fables" was printed four years later for E. S. Rogers, of 27 Grosvenor Street.

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